Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Atiku Abubakar, has slammed the President Bola Tinubu-led government over the abduction of students, a school principal and a National Examinations Council official in Kogi State.
Atiku said that with the recent abduction, the Federal Government has abandoned education while allowing insecurity to destroy the nation’s future.
Reacting to the attack at Government Secondary School, Odo-Ekina, where gunmen abducted the school’s principal, a NECO ad-hoc official and students writing the ongoing Senior Secondary Certificate Examination, Atiku described the incident as evidence of a government that has failed in its constitutional duty to protect lives and educational institutions.
In a statement issued on Wednesday by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, the former vice president said it was “both tragic and disgraceful” that Nigerian students could no longer sit for public examinations without the fear of being kidnapped.
“An examination hall should be a sanctuary of hope, not a crime scene. A school principal should be preparing students for the future, not negotiating with kidnappers. A NECO official should be supervising examinations, not struggling for survival in the hands of bandits. Yet this has become the grim reality under a government that has normalised insecurity,” Atiku said.
He argued that the Kogi incident was not an isolated case but part of a growing pattern of attacks on schools across the country, warning that educational institutions had become easy targets because criminal groups no longer feared the Nigerian state.
According to him, the worsening security situation cannot be separated from what he described as the Tinubu administration’s neglect of the education sector.
“A government that has repeatedly made education more expensive through unprecedented increases in WAEC and NECO examination fees, neglected public schools, failed to secure learning environments and reduced education to empty campaign slogans should not be surprised that criminals now see schools as abandoned territories,” he said.
He maintained that government policies had effectively delivered a “double assault” on Nigerian children by making education less affordable while failing to guarantee their safety in schools.
“First, they price poor children out of classrooms. Then they fail to protect those who remain in school. This is a double assault on the future of Nigeria. One is economic exclusion; the other is violent intimidation. Together, they amount to a systematic destruction of the dreams of an entire generation,” Atiku said.
The presidential candidate also criticised the Federal Government’s budgeting priorities, alleging that public funds were being diverted to projects with little national value while critical sectors such as education and security remained underfunded.
He argued that the failure to adequately secure schools was a direct consequence of misplaced priorities in public spending.
“The same budget that mysteriously accommodates billions of naira for items that defy logic cannot adequately secure the classrooms where Nigeria’s children are supposed to learn. That is how governments create the vacuum that criminals exploit,” he lamented.
Atiku further warned that repeated attacks on schools would continue to embolden criminal groups if decisive action was not taken.
“The bandits have become emboldened because they have watched a government that shows greater urgency for political campaigns than for protecting schools. Every successful kidnapping convinces another criminal gang that Nigerian schoolchildren are easy targets,” he added.
Describing the collapse of security around schools as “a collapse of governance itself,” Atiku said no responsible government should allow candidates writing nationally recognised examinations to become victims of armed gangs.
He called for the immediate and unconditional rescue of all abducted victims and urged the Federal Government to undertake a comprehensive review of security arrangements in schools and examination centres nationwide.
“History will not remember how many press releases this government issued after each abduction. History will remember whether it protected Nigeria’s children or abandoned them,” the statement further read.
Atiku added that while the current administration had made education increasingly unaffordable, it had also failed to protect schools from violent attacks.
“The children of Nigeria deserve books instead of bullets, classrooms instead of captivity, examinations instead of evacuation, and hope instead of horror. That is the minimum any responsible government owes its people,” he said.
Over the past five years, several schools across states including Kaduna, Niger, Zamfara and Katsina have witnessed mass kidnappings of students and staff, forcing authorities to temporarily shut schools in some affected communities and raising concerns about the safety of learning environments.
The incident also comes amid growing debate over the rising cost of public examination fees and broader concerns about access to education, with stakeholders calling for increased investment in school infrastructure, improved security and stronger protection for students and teachers.
